The thing I read on a dive bar bathroom wall that changed my life
There's a bathroom wall in a dive bar from my past that changed my life. I can remember exactly the bar and exactly the terrible first date I was on. I also remember that I was having an absolute garbage time of things in general at that moment. And from my sweet view from the toilet seat, when I removed my heavy head from my hands and wiped the tears from my eyes, there it was — scrawled in permanent marker between a sticker for a band I'd never heard of and a phone number for "a good time"
Never underestimate the passage of time and its ability to change everything.
I have thought about that sentence approximately elevendy billion times since then. Now that I see that written out, it’s a little embarrassing that one of the most formative pieces of wisdom I've ever encountered wasn’t from a guru but from a dirty bathroom in a college bar. But honestly? That tracks. Real things show up in weird places. The Universe will attempt to get you the message any way it can.
The bathroom wall quote works in two perspectives at the same time, and I think that's why it stays with me.
Perspective one: from this moment, the things you love will change. That business you built, that relationship you finally got right, that version of yourself you worked so hard to become — none of it is permanent. I say this not as a threat but as a reminder to actually be there for it while it's yours. To notice it. To marinate in it. To inhabit every part of it fully and celebrate it.
Perspective two: from this moment, things that are challenging will also change. The patches of life that felt like they were going to define you — those rough years, the implosions, the spectacular failures you were sure everyone was witnessing, when you felt like you were on the struggle bus and couldn’t unbuckle the seatbelt. They didn’t define you, they became one of the oodles of reasons you are the magical creature that you are today.
My birthday is next week. And I'm taking the whole week off — no emails, no classes, no anything — just to celebrate the fact that I get to exist in one of the most spectacular places on earth, that I can still move my body through the landscape, that my eyes can take in the riot of new flowers erupting, that my nose can smell the juniper trees after it rains, and to take a moment to appreciate being alive all these years.
But first, I wanted to write to you. Because birthdays have a way of making me want to pull up a chair and actually reckon with that quote, with time itself — not in the "ugh, where did THAT wrinkle come from?!" way (though let's be honest, there's always a little of that), but in the holy shit, look how far I've come! Look at me go! kinda way.
Birthdays are an opportunity once a year that really invite you to hold both of those of those perspectives at once. Here's what was, back them. Here's what is, now. Here's what the distance between those two actually look like when we pause long enough to see and acknowledge it.
And I don't know about you, but when I do that? The distance is always very surprising. In the best possible way.
A thing to try this week, birthday or not:
Think about where you were one year ago, five years ago — not to romanticize it, not to catastrophize it, just to see it clearly. Then think about one thing that is true now that was not true then. One thing you are now capable of, one thing you learned, or finished, or started, or can now handle better that wasn't available to you yet back then.
That's not an accident. That's the passage of time. That's you, doing the work of being alive.
I'm raising a glass to you this week — whatever you're in the middle of, and however far you've already come, you’ve come a long way, and that's something worth celebrating. Every single year.
With love and a solid high five,
~Adrienne
P.S. Health Not Hustle has been open for one year. One year! I don't totally know how that happened, but I know it happened because of you — the replies you sent last month alone had me alternating between laughing out loud and getting a little misty eyed, sometimes in the same email. The community that has shown up in this space over the last twelve months (or in a Kaiut class with me over the last 2+ years) is not something I take lightly. Thank you for being here. Genuinely. Now go book yourself into a class and let's celebrate properly.